As he did in LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, Colum McCann uses real-life events in TRANSATLANTIC to frame a larger story, this one a tale of four generations of women. From Alcock and Brown’s historic flight from Newfoundland to County Galway, to a young Frederick Douglass’s visit to Ireland, and George Mitchell’s efforts to broker peace in Northern Ireland, McCann covers 170 years of U.S.-Irish history to tell a riveting story of parents and children.